The Aikens

Jack B. Aiken and Beverly "Carole" Aiken
The Aikens, each 55, were true Florida natives, toes dug into Manatee County soil. Orange juice paid the bills.

Jack ran glass plants for Tropicana Products.
"His guys would have done anything for him," a co-worker says.

In spare hours, he fished. Carole hunted antique china. Three children grown, she'd taken in her mother, who neared 90. Hilda Myrick's last years would be at home, with family, Carole decided.

Myrick could manage on her own, which allowed the Aikens to take short trips together or enjoy nights on the town. They liked to dance and dine with friends, as they did the Saturday after Thanksgiving 1997.

That night, on the way home to Ellenton, Carole drove. Jack, husband of 34 years, sat beside her. Their Nissan truck crept northward on U.S. 41 through downtown Bradenton.

Just after midnight they reached the foggy Manatee River. Carole hugged the right lane going over the DeSoto Bridge. Two sets of headlights followed in the left lane.

The closest belonged to a Ruskin man, the farthest to an impatient pickup driver. Suddenly, at the river's far bank, the third vehicle swerved to pass the second. The pickup clipped the Ruskin driver's fender before rebounding into the Aikens, police reported.

The couple's Nissan careened into a tree, and the truck sped off.

The crash took two lives but changed more. A grandchild arrived, too late to know the Aikens" arms. Heartbroken over the loss, Carole's mother began to refuse food.

She now lives in a nursing home.
"I think she figured if she couldn't have her daughter back she might as well join her," Carole's sister says.

Blood alcohol: An autopsy found only a tiny, legal amount of alcohol in Carole's bloodstream (.01). The man accused of fleeing the scene wasn't tested. He surrendered too late for alcohol to show up.

Arrested: Prosecutors charged Ivan L. Sullivan, now 22, with two counts of vehicular homicide and one count of leaving the scene. His February trial was postponed after two state witnesses - 21-year-old Joshua Finnerty and 19-year-old Amy Lackey - failed to appear.

To report the missing witnesses" whereabouts, call Manatee County Crimestoppers at 941-747-2677.

	Balazs

John C. Balazs Jr. and Maryann Rose Fawcett
As a kid, Fawcett curled up in a sleeping bag, rather than muss her bed. Married, she vacuumed incessantly.

Her father called her Madame Butterfly.

She loved God, cheerleading, clothes, Avon Skin So Soft, cats Bob and Boots and beer. She spelled with ease but took years to pass algebra. She liked to say, "whatever."

She was 24; Balazs, 28.

He worked in road construction and lived with his father, who figured John Jr. would be a meteorologist, for love of weather. John Sr. served 20 years in the Navy, but John Jr. wasn't cut out for it. He lasted 14 months.

"I couldn't live like you," John used to tell his divorced dad. "I've got to have a family."

His father wondered if Maryann would be part of that plan.

The two were on foot in Pasco County at 2 a.m., Dec. 6, 1997.

They'd just bought a six-pack of Bud Ice. Both had lost driver's licenses for DUI - Fawcett for a few months, Balazs for five years - and both were legally drunk.

State Road 54, dark and dug up with construction, offered little choice: They walked side by side in the road, backs to traffic, wearing dark clothes and white sneakers.

From behind, ending a cell phone call, came Shane Lindsey Luepkes, stepson Mayor Peter Altman.

"The kind of boy who would surprise his mother by picking dandelions," Barbara Altman wrote to a judge.

Luepkes, then 31, had a criminal record for DUI, aggravated battery, battery, carrying a concealed weapon, disorderly conduct, criminal mischief and driving with a suspended license. In 1990, he got drunk and hit a light pole, reports state.

	Fawcett

He avoided trouble for seven years, until Dec. 6, 1997.

His Chevrolet Blazer hit Fawcett and Balazs.

On impact, Fawcett flew 31 feet, landed, then slid on the roadway 124 feet. Balazs flew 32 feet and slid 122 feet. The truck's hood buckled up 7 inches and shifted 10 inches toward Luepkes. The front grille shattered.

Luepkes didn't realize he had hit people, he said later, explaining why he didn't stop.

Balazs died instantly; Fawcett, an hour later.

An investigator linked the damaged grille to a Chevrolet truck or Blazer and issued a countywide alert.

	Luepkes

Four days and nine hours after the crash, Luepkes" attorney, Sam Williams, called the Florida Highway Patrol. Five days after the crash, Luepkes surrendered.

"He came in because his heart told him to," his mother wrote.

Troopers had been searching Luepkes" neighborhood, FHP Sgt. Don Young said. Blood alcohol: In autopsies, Balazs and Fawcett had blood alcohol levels of .15.

It was too late to test Luepkes.

Convicted: Pasco Circuit Judge Joseph Donahey sentenced Luepkes to a year of weekends in jail, 15 years probation and 1,000 hours community service for leaving the scene of a fatal crash.

The judge added two special orders: no alcohol, no cell phones.

	Black

Zannie Black
Most times, 80-year-old Black took care of himself. He lived with a Tampa nephew. People called him "Uncle."

Retired from the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad, he made tracks in a Tampa neighborhood near 34th Street and east Hillsborough Avenue. If he drank too much, neighbors ushered him home.

On Friday, April 25, 1997, he crossed a street.

He was sober.

Jeffrey Blezinski wasn't.

A high school dropout with a landscaping job, Blezinski got off work that day, cashed his paycheck, gassed up a 1968 Oldsmobile and drank beer with a friend, he told police.

Blezinski ate dinner and drank two more beers with a shot of Jack Daniels before heading east to buy cigarettes at the Seminole Smoke Shop.

At 8:50 p.m., he tailed a Mercury Cougar on Hillsborough Avenue, nearing 34th Street.

The light was green, but the Cougar driver stopped.

Blezinski changed lanes.

Inside the Cougar, a Sligh Junior High seventh grader and her father had spotted an elderly man crossing Hillsborough.

Too late, Blezinski punched the brakes. Black hit the hood and windshield. Blezinski pulled over a few blocks ahead, then fled, but not before the Cougar driver jotted down his tag number.

Three days later, Blezinski ran out of gas in Macon, Ga., and surrendered to police at a mall.

"Did the pedestrian go over the top of your car?" a Macon lieutenant asked him.

"Yes," Blezinski said.

"Was anybody there to render aid to him?"

"I don't know."

Black, 116 pounds, had been hit so hard his pants fell down. The blow fractured his skull and opened his heart. And a button from his jacket etched a 4-inch mark into the asphalt.

Blood alcohol: Blezinski couldn't be tested.

The night before his Sept. 4, 1997, Tampa court date, Blezinski staggered into traffic on South MacDill Avenue. Strangers called police, worried he might get hit. His blood alcohol level was .36.

	Blezinski

Convicted: Blezinski, now 36, leaving the scene of a fatal crash.

Judge Chet Tharpe gave him a year in jail, three years probation and 50 hours community service. He served five months, then two months more for violating probation. He skipped mandatory Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, didn't do the community service and smoked marijuana, his probation officer reported.

Blezinski lost his driver's license for a year.

Now free, he's eligible to reapply.

	Brennan

John F. Brennan
Brennan, 38, had only recently survived a fall from a three-story building. His family joked he had nine lives. He needed 10.

In 1987, after drinking beer, he ran over Paul Gilmore, son of a Hillsborough corrections officer, and fled the scene. Gilmore died. Brennan, a Thonotosassa cabinetmaker, spent a year in prison.

From 1982 to 1997, Brennan amassed 30 traffic tickets, and the state dubbed him a habitual violator, yanking his license.

He resorted to a Huffy bicycle.

Drunk, he rode the bike home from a sports bar the night of Dec. 4, 1997, hugging the shoulder of U.S. 92 east of Tampa.

	Crosson

Karen Gwen Crosson - previously convicted of drunk driving (1978 and 1993), careless driving (1988) and reckless driving (1993) - pulled onto the highway in an Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser.

She veered three feet outside a driving lane and crashed into Brennan.

She'd been drinking.

She says she wasn't drunk.

It was morning before anyone found Brennan dead in a ditch. Somebody called the sheriff's tip line. Crosson denied driving the night of the crash.

A detective reviewed a surveillance video from a nearby store and discovered otherwise.

Blood alcohol: Brennan, .13.

Crosson couldn't be tested.

Convicted: Crosson, 42, leaving the scene of a fatal crash. She has since changed her name to Evans. Judge Diana Allen sentenced her to two years probation and 50 hours community service.

	Mackey

Betty Ann Cabibi

It looked like a simple hit and run.

Philip Mackey, 37, had killed 55-year-old Cabibi.

Then troopers learned she was his girlfriend.

The two spilled out of a bar the afternoon of April 9, 1997, and hit State Road 54 speeding - Cabibi in her Chevrolet Blazer, Mackey in a borrowed pickup.

A single mother of four, she'd come to Zephyrhills from Texas for a new start.

He'd come from Canada.

They feuded that day.

Mackey chased after Cabibi on the highway.

Near Collier Parkway, he slammed into the back of her Blazer. Tires exploded, rims grabbed the asphalt and the Blazer tumbled into oncoming traffic.

Cabibi, with no seat belt, shot out like an arrow. She hit a Toyota headfirst above the driver's door handle.

She had tolerated life's ups and downs - a divorce, a mastectomy.

But this time, her body suffered a 3-inch gash through her right eye, a 7-inch gash in her scalp, a skull fracture, brain swelling, a lacerated liver, a fractured pelvis and a broken leg.

She didn't make it.

Blood alcohol: Cabibi, .09. Mackey, at large for a day, wasn't tested.

Convicted: Mackey got 15 years for third-degree murder and leaving the scene of a fatal crash

	Cochran

Debra Lynn Cochran

She stood 5-foot-8 and weighed 87 pounds.

She knew hospitals too well. As a young woman, Cochran had Hodgkin's disease. It cost her a boyfriend.

"He thought it was catchy," her mother, Dorothy Warkenthien, recalls. "He put all the things she had given him on the lawn."

Cochran had never married, not through two decades of remission.

"She enjoyed her freedom," her mother says.

She'd worked a bunch of jobs, one in a nursing home, one making watch bands, one watching children.

But the cancer had come back. Doctors had a name for it: adenocystic cancer of the parotid gland. It made the right side of her face draw inward. It spread to her lungs and liver.

She looked older than 45.

Life had become so short.

In the pre-dawn darkness of April 18, 1997, Cochran crossed Ulmerton Road. East-west traffic had a green light as she walked diagonally through an intersection at Largo Mall.

Construction worker William Benjamin Baxter swerved to avoid her.

	Wappler

Thomas E. Wappler, a lane away, hit Cochran with the right front corner of his Jeep and didn't stop.

Baxter followed him, insisting he return.

Police, suspicious of Wappler's demeanor, ordered a blood alcohol test but later learned he was developmentally impaired.

Arrested: Wappler, then 45, of Largo, pleaded no contest to leaving the scene of a fatal crash.

The judge withheld adjudication and gave Wappler 18 months probation, then ended it after nine months.

Wappler's driving privileges were unaffected.

	Cohoon

James Edward Cohoon Jr.
Sober, he loved horses, CB radios and his boys.

Drunk, he broke laws like match sticks.

Disorderly conduct. Criminal mischief.

"He done some crazy, wild things, but every kid does," says his mother, Brenda Mills.

Burglary. Battery. Assault.

"When he'd start drinking, he couldn't handle it," says widow Clara Cohoon, 34. "He just got lost."

Clara and James Cohoon had known each other since age 10.

Born the same month of the same year - August 1964 - they grew up riding horses in St. Petersburg. James" mother and stepfather lived in a trailer on 62nd Avenue, parked at the ranch they ran. They kept chickens and cows. They boarded horses.

Years later, a timber crushed his stepfather's skull.

James fathered two sons, one with Clara.

"Last time he was in jail, he got out and was sober almost a year," she says. "He was the most caring person in the world when he wasn't drinking."

Married six years ago, they'd known better times.

James had a girlfriend with him when he died.

"We were having our problems and then he met this weirdo woman and he started drinking again," Clara says.

Troopers found a bottle of vodka in the road that night, Oct. 21, 1997.

James had either fallen or bent to retrieve something on 58th Avenue North near Haines Road.

The 1985 Ford Thunderbird dragged him 80 yards.

Slivers of red and gray paint in his torn face led to the car, where his hair stuck to the grillwork, even after its owner went through a car wash. Witnesses got the Thunderbird's tag number.

	Franke

Troopers arrested Robert E. Franke early enough to find alcohol in his blood. He says he didn't start drinking until after the crash, but he pleaded no contest to charges.

Blood alcohol: Franke, .12; Cohoon, .31.

Convicted: Franke, 36, Pinellas Park; leaving the scene of a fatal crash, DUI, evidence tampering, witness tampering.

He got a suspended 22-month sentence, plus six months work release, five years probation and 50 hours community service.

He lost his license for six months.

MaryAnn Cornish
A grandmother at 48, she sometimes babysat her grandchild.

On Dec. 12, 1997, the rain made a river of Florida Avenue, and a raw chill soaked to the bone. Inside houses and apartments, people were putting up Christmas lights.

Cornish had been drinking.

She wanted something from the store.

So, with dinner warming in the oven, she left the toddler alone.

Cornish crossed Florida Avenue once, then coming home after 6 p.m., crossed it again, into the path of a pickup truck.

The blow hurled her into the flooded road and a second car hit her - a large, dark car with a low rear. It dragged her 830 feet, around the corner to Stanley Avenue.

The first driver stopped. The second didn't.

Cornish died with a broken neck, broken legs, a torn heart, a fractured skull and lacerations to her brain.

Carrying no identification, she went to the morgue as Jane Doe.

A day passed before a friend discovered the 2-year-old, alone, but safe, in a smoky apartment, and alerted family, who called police.

Blood alcohol: Cornish, .23.

No arrest.

To help, call the Tampa Police Department, (813) 276-3589.

John Doe
He's FBI No. 746-849-FB3 now.

If anyone knew him, they didn't say.

Homeless, he lived under a bridge at the Anclote River in Pasco County.

He had grayish blue eyes. Brown wavy hair. A mustache and beard. He wore a string necklace, white sweat pants and gray wool socks, and the pocket of his white, short sleeved shirt said, "Puerto Rico Bye-Bye."

He had a scar on his right hand.

He might have been in his 30s or 40s.

He hadn't been drinking, not a drop.

The night of Oct. 13, 1997, he was killed while walking along Alternate 19 near Louis Avenue in Holiday.

Witnesses didn't get a tag number.

There's been no arrest.

To help, call the FHP at (800) 524-1240.

Joseph Allen Elchinger
He broke up with his girlfriend and left Missouri for Florida, where he signed on to help build the Sunshine Skyway.

Later came jobs in painting and landscape.

Twenty-six years old, he lived in Bradenton.

He was walking along West Ninth Avenue near downtown Bradenton, Tuesday, Feb. 18, 1997, when he was hit by an eastbound car.

He'd been drinking. He'd lost his driving privileges repeatedly in Missouri for infractions that included drunk driving.

Police found the car abandoned in woods.

The owner had reported it stolen.

Arrested: Two months later, on a tip, police charged Jeffery Gutierrez, 16, with leaving the scene of a fatal crash and driving without a license.

The car belonged to his uncle's girlfriend.

The judge sentenced the juvenile to 50 hours community service.

	Futch

Michael Bernard Futch
Futch, 39, lived on the streets, most recently behind a U-Save at Fletcher Avenue and Bruce B. Downs Boulevard.

In the daytime, he hid his stuff so he could walk around.

His mom had died in 1993, when an Amtrak train tumbled into a muddy Alabama bayou. Futch's own life had long since become a quagmire, a dirty river of alcohol that kept pulling him under.

Drinking made him feel like less of a nobody.

Funny thing, he was smart.

"He could sit down with any man of the world and hold a conversation," says brother Robert Maybie Jr., a respiratory therapist at Pasco Community Hospital.

They grew up in public housing - Riverview Terrace in Tampa. Michael, one of seven kids, went to Cleveland Elementary and Van Buren Junior High. He left high school early. He liked football and music.

He got married. He had a son and a daughter.

Drinking messed up everything.

"Once you hit rock bottom, it's hard to get up," Maybie says. He ran a men's shelter in Arizona. He wishes Tampa had more to offer people like his brother but knows Michael didn't like shelters.

Futch had been in jail eight times since 1986, on charges of DUI, battery and grand theft.

"It all started years ago with a suspended driver's license. He could never get the probation done," Maybie says. "He kept violating and violating."

Futch worked construction when he could. His favorite job was landscaping. Before his death, he worked day labor, then spent his money on alcohol.

Drunk, he tried to cross Sheldon Road in Town 'N Country, the evening of Aug. 20, 1997.

"What was weird, he was killed about a block and a half from my mom's house," Maybie says. "He was just over there reminiscing. He had a big old heart but couldn't give up the booze."

He was removed from life support Aug. 28.

	Pajoy

The driver, Ursula Pajoy, had fled. Deputies found her by tracing anonymous telephone calls from her friend, who kept asking about the victim. It was too late to test her for alcohol.

Blood alcohol: Futch, .35.

Arrested: Pajoy, then 20, had a good driving record. She pleaded no contest to leaving the scene, and a judge withheld adjudication. She got 18 months probation and 250 hours community service, but kept her license.

"The girl has to live with it the rest of her life," Maybie says. "I think that's bad enough."

	Gaskill

Brenda K. Gaskill
A Wimauma homemaker and mother of two, she went into Sun City Center with her husband to shop March 15, 1997.

He drove. She sat on the passenger side, seat belt buckled.

Their 1975 Cadillac turned into the path of an oncoming pickup truck at U.S. 301 and State Road 674, about 12:30 p.m.

Brenda Gaskill, 46, lived just seven days.

The impact tore the vital carotid artery. Blood coagulated in her jugular vein. Her brain activity slowed, and pneumonia set in.

The truck driver fled on foot, abandoning his own injured passenger, Pascual M. Pascual. Pascual, wanting a haircut, had taken a ride from a stranger, he said. Troopers traced the truck to a Virginia man, who said he sold it without getting a name.

The driver wasn't found.

To help, call the Florida Highway Patrol, Hillsborough County, (813) 632-6859, Ext. 257.

	Michael Grant, left, with friend Christopher Johnson

Michael Joseph Grant
Tires hissed on the wet pavement, street lights guiding a parade of night owls. Grant, who worked at Burger King with his mother, pedaled his bicycle south along U.S. 19 in Palm Harbor.

It was just after 2 a.m. April 12, 1997.

He'd been with friends. He drank a beer and his blood contained traces of alcohol, legal for a motorist or bicyclist, but not at 17.

The eldest of Rhea Grant's three children, Michael lived a grown-up life. He had a newborn son of his own, whom he helped support.

He belonged to a gang and had a tattoo - "Lil Tyson" - for boxer Mike Tyson.

He watched "Jeopardy" on TV. Often, he knew the answers.

"My son wasn't the best of young people but he wasn't the worst, either," his mother would tell a judge.

From behind came Matthew Ray Phifer, 24, in a Ford Bronco with white supremacist bumper stickers.

Phifer had racked up five traffic tickets in five years. He was legally drunk. At a bar that night, friends offered a ride, but Phifer refused it, a trooper reported.

The Bronco hit the bike. Phifer lost control and the Bronco overturned.

Off-duty nurse John Austin Jarboe drove up to the scene. He aimed his headlights at Grant, who lay dying in the muddy grass.

He tried CPR.

He saw Phifer break a window to leave the Bronco. He called to him for assistance, but Phifer fled on foot, the nurse told a trooper.

Later, Phifer returned with his brother.

Blood alcohol: Phifer, .11; Grant, .03.

Convicted: Phifer pleaded no contest to DUI and leaving the scene.

A judge withheld adjudication on the second charge, sentencing Phifer to eight months in jail, 14 years probation, a year of house arrest and 100 hours community service.

He suspended Phifer's driver's license for five years.

Eleven days later, the judge lowered penalties - work release instead of jail, limited driving after a year.

"Not a day goes by that we don't look for him," Rhea Grant says of Michael.

"Not a day goes by that we don't hear his voice."

Mark Hubert Henning
The 30-year-old divorced father struggled with alcohol.

He came to Florida in 1997, joining his own father in Gibsonton. Bright and personable, he fancied cooking and fishing.

"Anyplace there was water and fish," father Frank Henning says.

Mark Henning often found work, and abandoned it easily.

By 4 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 25, 1997, he'd also found drinks and marijuana.

On his way home from Jester's bar, he tried to cross a dark Nundy Avenue, near Gloria Street in Gibsonton, but didn't make it.

The impact cut his liver and spleen. To the medical examiner, it appeared he was dragged.

The driver got out, looked at Henning, got back in his car and fled.

Blood alcohol: Henning, .25.

Investigators, on a tip, found the car in woods off U.S. 301, but continue to build a case against the suspected driver.

To help, call the Hillsborough Sheriff's Office Crimestopper line, (800) 873-8477.

	Hicks

David "Benny" Hicks
It was a cool, damp Sunday, 1:15 a.m., so Hicks wore a jacket.

As usual, he was on foot.

As usual, he'd been drinking.

"He walked about everywhere he went," his father Frank says. "He lost his car because of drinking and driving."

Hicks, as a child, had survived radiation and chemotherapy for a tumor the size of a baseball.

As a 34-year-old adult, he wanted cigarettes the night of Feb. 9, 1997.

The impact with a Ford Explorer opened his head and heart. He rolled off the hood into the path of a Saturn, which hit his legs.

	Catalani

"It was so dark and terrible, we had thought somebody threw something at the car," says driver Joseph J. Catalani, charged with leaving the scene of a fatal crash.

Blood alcohol: Hicks, .28.

Arrested: Joseph J. Catalani, then 42, pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of a fatal crash.

Zdravko Ignjatic
The Bosnian immigrant lived through war, then died delivering newspapers his second week in America.

It happened Sunday, April 27, 1997, just before dawn.

Ignjatic, 46, was helping his brother-in-law, a carrier for the St. Petersburg Times. Nedeljko Petrovic drove a van through Clearwater, as Ignjatic sorted newspapers in back.

Leaving a subdivision, Petrovic steered onto Roosevelt Boulevard. A truck slammed into them. Ignjatic, who wore no seat belt, flew out the rear.

Petrovic lost consciousness.

When he regained it, Ignjatic was sprawled on the road.

The nightmare worsened. As Petrovic neared Ignjatic, a third vehicle crushed the downed man's head - before the driver fled the scene.

Petrovic won't discuss the crash.

"When he does, he usually starts crying," says Linda Foster, who works for Petrovic's attorney. "It's really hard on him."

The third driver was never found.

To help, call the Florida Highway Patrol in Pinellas Park, (727) 570-5010.

	Islas

Augustin H. Islas
Five-foot-five, 129-pound Islas drank as many as 12 beers before attempting to walk home from a party, deputies learned.

The Plant City nursery worker wound up flat on his back on Sparkman Road, near Jap Tucker Road, dead at 20.

An eastbound car rolled over him about 1:19 a.m. Saturday, March 29, 1997, crushing his skull.

Based on a brake part and paint chip left at the scene, an investigator narrowed the car to a red, 1993-97 Lincoln Mark VIII or Ford Thunderbird.

There were eight such cars in Plant City but none showed evidence of the crash.

Blood alcohol: Islas, .29.

To help, call the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office Crimestopper line, (800) 873-8477.

Ethel M. Johnson
She wore a Sagittarius pendant on her neck.

She was a Libra, with high cheek bones and a soft smile.

Crab legs made her smile. So did collard greens and rap music.

"Lunar phase highlights promotion," her horoscope promised that day, April 13, 1997.

But promises had lost meaning, and at age 24, she had regrets. Once a student at Northeast High School in St. Petersburg, she talked about returning for a GED, like she talked about quitting crack cocaine.

"Sometimes she'd come over and say, "Grandma, I'm not doing that any more,"" says grandmother Christine Grant.

Johnson made her Grandma feel loved.

Her great-grandmother, too. They prayed together, and Johnson had found a new church. Family called her "Lil Mama," and she wanted to have kids some day.

But she died with a crack pipe in her pants. It showed up after a thump and a scream on a patch of Fourth Avenue South where the street light often flickers.

No one saw much.

The medical examiner found residue of cocaine, nicotine, marijuana and alcohol in her body.

Police found a record of drug and prostitution convictions.

Her skull was crushed; her liver, lacerated.

In seconds, she was dead.

A truck? A van? Investigators could only guess.

To help, call the St. Petersburg Police Department, (727) 893-7633.

Leroy Jones
Again, he had wandered out of Sunset Nursing Home - "L. Jones" printed on his underwear - and hit the streets of St. Petersburg.

He was 83.

Six feet tall with curly white hair, he was hard to miss but harder to find.

He carried $1.70, a jar of Vasoline and the scars of triple bypass surgery.

He was out all night. He wound up on Central Avenue Jan. 27, 1997, near dawn. So did driver Donald Mostello, 72, en route to dialysis at the Veteran's Administration Hospital.

Central Avenue glowed with a necklace of mercury vapor lamps.

Jones, who had cataracts, stepped from the shadows, in front of Mostello's decade-old Monte Carlo.

Neither man had been drinking.

In seconds, Jones lost his shoes, his socks, his right leg and his life.

Mostello, who had emphysema and later died, drove on. But he found a telephone and called police.

He had a clean driving record and was not charged.

	Katz

Alice Katz
Katz had come from Forest Hills, N.Y., to visit Sun City Center sisters.

They were retired. She wasn't.

Single, she greeted her senior years with red toenails and blue jeans, and continued to work at a New York office. Her boss wouldn't let her retire.

"Everyone loved her," says sister Jean Goldstein.

"She was that kind of person, so good."

Once in town, Katz would try to help out by running errands.

"She was the best guest anybody could ever have," Goldstein says.

Katz would have flown home that day, March 6, 1997.

Friend Keith Bostwick volunteered to drive her to the airport. They headed up 50th Street, toward Interstate 4.

"Alice liked to be at the airport an hour and a half early so she could settle down and get something to eat," Bostwick says.

Suddenly, a pickup pulled out of a liquor store parking lot.

It hit the Escort broadside.

Katz soared from the rolling car. She died of head injuries, and the pickup driver fled.

	Robbins

Convicted: Robin R. Robbins, then 31, of Tampa. Detectives got her name from a crowd of dirt lot drinkers.

She was a trucker, with half-inch, bleached-white hair.

Robbins pleaded no contest to leaving the scene of a fatal crash and possession of marijuana. Judge Debra Behnke gave her three years probation and two years community control, but suspended a 22-month prison term and a year jail term.

Nature dealt its own sentence: Robbins died Aug. 17, 1998, at age 32, of an undisclosed illness.

	Kettlety

Danial Stephen Kettlety
He began life as a toddler with blond ringlets in San Jose, Calif.

Overnight, he shot up to a 6-foot-2 athlete, a community college student who stocked produce at Winn Dixie and had fallen in love.

The growth wasn't unexpected.

He had an appetite.

"If you called it food, Danial would eat it," says his father, Wayne Kettlety, of New Port Richey.

Danial could polish off meat loaf and mashed potatoes but stay lean, all the while teasing his mom with a pinch.

He burned calories like an incinerator. He'd come home from school and run 10 miles or bike 30 before others could get out of their clothes. He and his sister Sarah swam competitively.

He also encouraged others.

"He even did that with us," his mother Sheree says. "We used to go on runs. He'd finish so far ahead, he'd run back and say, "Come on, you can do it." "

He didn't blaze a trail academically, but he could muster the will to turn a bad grade into a good one.

He graduated from River Ridge High School. Considering a career in architecture, he enrolled as a freshman at Pasco-Hernando Community College.

His girlfriend had become the center of his life.

"He'd blow his last dime on her," Sheree Kettlety says. "She was everything to him."

He equated television sets with sports. He clipped headlines from sports pages and kept them in a box. He liked his music, from techno-metal Marilyn Manson to old-time rock "n" roll. Anything but country.

He didn't care for morning. The entire concept of it.

"If you had to wake him up, duck," his father says.

On a November morning in 1997, he left home before dawn, apparently planning to return a video before going to work. He walked or jogged along the east side of Ridge Road near Little Road in Port Richey.

Something hit him from behind.

Investigators suspect a pickup truck but have little else to go on. "There was no witness to the accident," says Florida Highway Patrol Sgt. Don Young. "There was no physical evidence, either at the scene or on Danial Kettlety's clothing."

Kettlety's worst injuries were head injuries, including a fractured skull and brain stem hemorrhage.

In the aftermath, his parents suffered their own wounds.

A cross at the roadside marks the spot. Wayne and Sheree Kettlety freshen the flowers each week. Sheree hated the way antidepressants made her feel, so now she finds comfort in Compassionate Friends, a support group of parents who lost children.

The Kettletys are offering a $7,500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the guilty driver.

To help, call the Florida Highway Patrol, (800) 500-1240 or private investigator Holden & Associates at 727-849-1605. For information about Compassionate Friends meetings in Pasco County, call Sheree Kettlety at 727-372-9396.

	Kinney

Dorothy Jean Kinney
She carried $1 in food stamps.

She wore jean shorts, a striped shirt, five colored beads and a string of tattoos - "Bob," "TA," another "Bob," "Lee" and "Property of Robbie."

Family called her Dottie, or sometimes "Twinkletoes."

Her 5-foot-8 frame weighed just 95 pounds, but the nickname came from wanderlust.

She left two marriages and five children. She had a big heart but seemed to move with the wind.

"We'd know when she was ready to leave," says Christina McLaughlin. "My mother would give her a couple of dollars, and she'd end up in Tijuana. My sister was a free spirit."

Kinney drank heavily the night of June 4, 1997.

It wasn't the first time.

She was 39, but alcohol had stolen a decade from her skin.

"God help her," says her mother, Dorothy Hegarty of South Boston, Mass. "I love her so, but I couldn't straighten her out."

A pickup truck hit Kinney on Cleveland Street near Fiesta Restaurant in Clearwater, about 8:48 p.m. The next day in South Boston, a family with more bills than money got a visit from police.

The ashes came by mail in a box.

"We held onto it for a while and then let her ashes go, down by the water," McLaughlin says. "My father got a boat and took her out to sea. My dad said, "Let her go. Let her be free." "

No one's been arrested.

Blood alcohol: Kinney, .39.

To help, call the Clearwater Police Department, (727) 562-4242.

	Lemoine

Jules Colmore Lemoine Jr.
Life began with Hope, Ark., but Lemoine had lived in 27 states and attended 20 schools. His father drew topographic maps for the federal government. Twice a year, they moved.

Jules towed his guitar.

About age 12, he started his first band.

"When they were younger, it was that rock and roll," says his mother, Bernice Lemoine of Markville, La. "And he was still playing. All his life, that's all he ever did."

He'd even left college for bar gigs on the road, just one credit shy of graduation. Customers kept sending drinks, and Lemoine kept drinking - through marriage, fatherhood, divorce and life alone in Florida.

"He still dreamed of making it big," his mother says.

His ex-wife died of cancer.

His success didn't come.

His liver mourned, and his ulcer bled.

Then he was 46 and still drunk, crossing 66th Street on foot in Pinellas Park on Oct. 19, 1997.

He bounced off a moving car near 126th Avenue North. Then, apparently, a second vehicle dragged him 75 feet.

Only the first driver stopped.

"An odor of alcohol wafts from the body," associate Pinellas-Pasco medical examiner Marie Hansen wrote in the autopsy report.

Lemoine died with a purple guitar pick in his pocket.

In his memory, friends erected a cross on 66th Street in Largo. They adorned it with a beer label.

Blood alcohol: Lemoine, .28.

The first driver wasn't charged. The second driver wasn't found.

To help, call the Florida Highway Patrol in Pinellas Park, (727) 570-5010.

	Licea

Rafael "Ralph" E. Licea
Licea, 24, lived at home.

His mother Sally had a fit when he got a tattoo.

Now she has his face tattoed over her heart. She carries his work shirt to bed and longs for their talks.

"He was just a sweetheart," she says. "He was honest. You could really tell he cared about people. He was a loving, gentle man."

He did electrical work. At home, he helped pay bills.

Now and then, he found trouble, sometimes with the mother of his child. "He was young, and she was young," Sally says. "They would fight. Her mother would call the police.

"I remember one time standing in a courtroom. I thought to myself, "If I would have heard this about somebody I didn't know, I would say lock them him up and throw away the key." But I knew Ralph. I knew he really wasn't all these things."

He rarely drank, his brother says.

The night of Sept. 19, 1997, Ralph Licea and his girlfriend, Bobbie Jo Long, left a party with another friend and headed home in Ralph's 1983 Cadillac. In the car, they argued.

"Ralph never liked to drive the car while he was angry," Sally says. Licea, sober, stopped the car in the right lane of 38th Avenue North and got out into the center lane. The argument continued through an open door.

His companions saw him wave at an approaching truck, apparently to prevent a crash. The truck switched lanes, avoiding the Cadillac, but not Licea.

The impact opened his heart.

	Paquette

His body rode the hood for 100 feet.

Paramedics knew he wouldn't live. Police knew a Chevy S-10 pickup had lost its front grill and emblem before fleeing the scene.

Later that night, 27-year-old Randy Paquette surrendered.

Blood alcohol: Paquette, .13. He said he didn't begin drinking until after the crash.

Convicted: He pleaded no contest to leaving the scene. A jury convicted him of DUI. A judge sentenced him to a year plus two months in county jail, 14 years probation and 50 hours community service.

	Lombardo

Teena Marie Lombardo
Fourteen stitches in the back of the head pushed her out of Illinois.

She'd had it with her abusive boyfriend.

"Auntie Vita, I want to get away," Lombardo told her godmother, Vita Wesley. "I think I can go to Florida."

They hugged each other goodbye in a Burger King not far from Berwyn, Ill., where Lombardo had grown up. It was July 1997. Lombardo, only a few years before, had sweet-talked her aunt and uncle into remarrying each other.

With a welfare check and money from a part-time job, she moved a baby girl and 13-year-old son into a motel on U.S. 19 in St. Petersburg.

"She came here from fire to the fry pan and got a boyfriend who was a druggie," says Venice Motel owner Jim Karagas.

On a dreary Friday, Sept. 12, 1997, Karagas asked for the late rent.

Lombardo begged. Things were looking up. She had a new job at Arby's. Karagas felt bad for the kids.

"Straighten up or that's it," he remembers warning.

She paid the rent that day.

That night, she tried to cross U.S. 19. She had four bus tokens and 2 cents in her pocket.

"I'll be home for Christmas," she had promised Wesley that week.

Later, her remains would go back to Berwyn, where Ann Svec at Svec Funeral Home had tutored Teena as a child.

	Roberts

And Thomas John Roberts would be charged in the crash.

He drove a Ford Probe. His Florida driving record included a DUI conviction. Police say he hit Lombardo and kept going, then dumped the car two miles away. He lived with a sister on Treasure Island.

St. Petersburg police caught him riding a cab home.

Blood alcohol: Roberts, .12, about 3 1/2 hours after the crash.

Arrested: Roberts pleaded not guilty to DUI manslaughter and leaving the scene of a fatal crash.

Awaiting trial, he vanished. It cost bail bondsman Al Estes $10,000.

In addition to the two felony charges, Roberts faces a half-dozen bad check charges to Publix stores.

To help: Call bail bondsman Al Estes at (727) 571-9999.

	Matos

Audrey Matos and Hector Matos-Cordova
Audrey had just turned 14.

She and her uncle Hector left Tampa early that morning, June 24, 1997, for a visit with her grandmother and cousins.

She had cake and balloons to share.

In Tampa, her parents owned La Especial, a grocery on Columbus Drive. Her uncle ran a roofing company.

In the van, Audrey sat next to the uncle. He drove, as the sun tickled the eastern horizon. The two-tone brown Dodge van, four years older than Audrey, chugged southward on County Road 675 in rural Manatee County.

As they neared a subdivision north of State Road 70, they suddenly weren't alone.

	Matos-Cordova

A tractor-trailer rig pulled across their path.

Hector hit the brakes. They weren't wearing seat belts. The van skidded 19 feet and slammed into the trailer. Audrey died first. Hector was alive as the trucker continued his left turn, dragging the van until it came loose.

Hector held on, until they were no longer alone, and then the Matos family lost two.

Blood alcohol: Hector Matos tested at .04, which is legal.

No arrest.

To help call the Florida Highway Patrol, Manatee County, (941) 751-7647, Ext. 131.

	Krista L. Smith and William G. Mattox

Krista L. Smith and William G. Mattox
When Krista Smith walked into a room, the phone automatically rang.

She taught kindergarten. Bill Mattox, 38, ran a restaurant.

They shared a gift for gab.

"Socializing was her hobby," says Krista's mother, Donna Smith of Glastonbury, Conn.

"Friendly and outgoing," Carolyn Mattox calls her son.

The couple shared a Bradenton apartment, and parents figured they'd get married. Bill's dog Coco posed willingly for a family photo. Krista, 27, supported Bill's favorite Miami Dolphins, even though she and her best friend Sue had always favored hockey.

Carolyn Mattox left the radio on all night July 18, 1997. That's how she heard about the accident on the Palma Sola causeway. Early the next morning, her other son, Hardy, who lives in Brandon, came to the door.

Someone had rear-ended Krista's Honda, pushing it into a head-on collision.

Bill was driving. Neither wore seat belts. Bill's air bag inflated, but the couple died at the scene.

Blood alcohol: Mattox tested at .06, which is legal.

Bradenton police pursued several leads to no avail.

To help, call the Bradenton Police Department, (941) 708-6273, Ext. 336.

	Wilson, left and Michael

Michael C. McCall and Jennifer McCall Wilson
Pedro Senteno Jr. and Alfonso Claudio went to the Wimauma rodeo. After the last bull, they headed home.

Senteno, 25, drove a Ford van.

Even with no license, he had racked up two DUI convictions and a speeding ticket. Dec. 6, 1997, he drank beer. More than a dozen beers, he would tell a nurse. Less than two, he would tell a detective.

On Erie Road, he took a short cut.

Jennifer McCall lived on Erie Road near Palmetto with her parents and her 4-year-old son, Michael. Her parents owned a fumigation business. They lived a few miles east of the Sunshine Skyway's southern toes.

She'd grown up nearby, popular and pretty, a cheerleader for Palmetto High School. At 24, she owned Rags to Riches, a hair and nail salon.

Marriage didn't work, but motherhood suited her fine.

She lived for little Michael. That evening, after shopping, she buckled him into his car seat.

They were a half-minute from home when, at Erie Road, Senteno's short cut placed him in Wilson's lane.

He hit her, head-on.

She died in the crash. Michael lived for just a day.

Senteno and Claudio fled on foot. A Manatee sheriff's deputy found them in the woods.

Blood alcohol: Senteno, .17.

Convicted: Senteno, two counts of DUI manslaughter and one count each of DUI with serious injury, DUI with property damage, leaving the scene of a crash with death, and driving while license suspended in a negligent manner.

The judge sentenced him to 34 1/2 years in state prison and took away his driver's license for life.

	McVey

Melissa Ann McVey
In Marshall Seigler's view, everything began with bikes. He found some, piled in a ditch. With a truck, he could haul them.

He talked to neighbors.

That's how Susan Kovac Henegar wound up driving her pickup around Polk County the afternoon of Feb. 15, 1997. She'd been drinking wine and smelled like it, Seigler recalled for lawyers.

Bikes loaded, Henegar wanted some "crank," Seigler told lawyers. Crank is a street name for methamphetamine.

"She started driving 80, 90, 100 miles an hour," he said.

It made him nervous. He led her to his friend's house, then hid under the elephant ears until he heard the truck leave.

Meanwhile, Mellissa McVey visited her husband Billy Joe at the scale house. He trucked fruit. He had one more load to haul before quitting time, then the McVeys would camp out with their kids.

Mellissa, 26, drove a Bronco.

It was loaded with groceries from Sam's.

She headed south, toward Bowling Green, where they lived. In the northbound lanes, witnesses saw a northbound truck make a U-turn, before slamming into the Bronco.

"Coming down 17, I passed the wreck," Billy Joe McVey says. "It was about dark."

He didn't see much, just a blanket that looked vaguely familiar.

He got home and she wasn't there. Then he remembered the blanket.

He'd bought her one just like it.

"She didn't need the best of things to make her happy," he says.

Mellissa, ejected from the Bronco, died en route to the hospital. She hadn't been drinking, but her blood showed traces of methamphetamines - the drug Henegar allegedly sought.

That puzzled family, her husband said.

Convicted: Henegar, vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of a fatal crash. The judge sentenced her to 12 years in prison.

	Sylakowski

Juan Martin Miguel
He was from Guatemala.

The consulate would want an explanation.

This was it: He had food in his stomach and alcohol racing through his blood. On a dark Saturday night in February 1997, Juan Miguel walked until, at a Publix near Mann Road in Lakeland, he crossed northbound lanes of U.S. 98.

In the median, his short, chunky frame wavered.

Then he stepped out into southbound traffic.

He made it through one lane but not the next. Widow Swaii Sylakowski had been drinking, too. She was in a car, driving about 55 miles per hour.

The Honda hit his shin and broke leg bones. It ripped through his back into his abdominal cavity.

He died, just 25 years old.

Sylakowski fled. Later that night, she came back.

Blood alcohol: Miguel, .36; Sylakowski, .07.

Arrested: Sylakowski pleaded no contest to reckless driving and leaving the scene. A judge withheld adjudication. She got two years probation and 50 hours community service.

	Butterfield

Gwendolyn K. Miles
Miles, 26, had two baby girls at home.

She'd grown up in Live Oak and married Wayne Miles at 16. They traveled together in a 32-foot camper, living in a border town in Mexico before returning to Land O" Lakes.

"She was a very loving person," Wayne Miles says. "She loved her babies very much."

The night of June 22, 1997, Gwen Miles went to a party.

Well after midnight, nine people, ages 15 to 26, left the party in a Jeep Wrangler.

"Everyone was drinking except for myself because I don't drink," says passenger Heather Brewer, 20.

"We were pretty much in the woods, sticks and stuff, and we didn't have anything better to do besides ride around in my best friend's Jeep."

Dorothy Butterfield, then 19, drove, troopers say.

Rounding a corner on Minneola Drive, the Jeep rolled over, crushing Miles and ejecting the occupants.

It came to rest upright.

"There was only two people really conscious, myself and another girl named Krystal," Brewer says.

"I thought everyone had died."

The two went for help. When they came back, Butterfield was brushing herself off and wanted to leave, Brewer says.

"She kept telling me, "We got to get out of here." "

They went to Butterfield's house, then spent the night elsewhere.

Arrested: Butterfield, then 19, was arrested the next day. She faces charges of leaving the scene of an accident with death, vehicular homicide and having no valid driver's license.

The Florida Highway Patrol reported the crash as "alcohol-related."

"By the time we were able to get her tested there was of course no blood alcohol," says Sgt. Don Young of the Florida Highway Patrol.

The case is scheduled for trial April 26.

Irene Montak
Embroidered flowers prettied her blouse.

Little else seemed nice that day.

One driver hit Montak and didn't stop, then another stopped to steal the 82-year-old Port Richey woman's purse and shoes.

Montak's life ended on Zimmerman Road in Bayonet Point the evening of Oct. 17, 1997. She had never married, never had children, no family, only friends. She died on asphalt amid strangers.

On her own, she toughed out life. It brought heart disease, pelvic surgery and varicose veins. She paid bills with textile work, before retiring 20 years ago from New Jersey. Short and chubby, she doctored her hair blond and met each day with Catholic faith.

The impact tore her heart and lungs.

It broke her nose, her right elbow and right leg.

Suspect: Marshall John Ellgas, jailed in Wisconsin. Investigators found a damaged Geo Metro in his girlfriend's Port Richey garage.

Ellgas, then 34, wasn't supposed to be in Florida. He was on probation in Wisconsin. Authorities there jailed him on his return. A Florida warrant alleges he left the scene of a fatal crash.

	Moritz

Sharon Moritz
Christmas 1997, Moritz visited her boyfriend.

Christmas 1997, two teenagers took turns driving a stolen red Chevrolet Lumina.

Their paths crossed on Juneau Street near Tampa Greyhound Track.

It was drizzling. Moritz, 34, wore shorts. Her boyfriend, Earl Kerr, stood at the gate of his sister's house, watching Moritz walk to the corner store. She'd come from Michigan to visit. Back home, she had three kids.

From behind him came an engine's roar. The Lumina sped west on Juneau, toward Nebraska Avenue. Inside, 17-year-old Jimmy McCullough steered, with 14-year-old Andre Thomas at his side. Near 10th Street, he swerved as if to hit Andre's brother, then veered away.

The speeding Lumina caught a curb and flipped on its side, skidding rapidly toward Moritz.

Kerr called out a warning. She couldn't hear him.

	McCollough

The car bounced over a culvert, hit a curb, crushed three cement columns and a short wall, but still carried momentum enough to break Moritz's back, cut off a leg and severe her spinal cord.

Paramedics couldn't revive her.

Meanwhile, the two boys fled on foot.

Convicted: McCullough, leaving the scene of an accident with death, vehicular homicide, no valid driver's license.

He'd been in trouble previously for possession of crack cocaine.

Hillsborough Circuit Judge Ralph Steinberg sentenced him to 17 years in prison.

Eutiguio Pina-Salvador
Pina, 27, had left a wife in Hidalgo, Mexico, to pick crops for American farmers.

Just after daylight, Jan. 15, 1997, he and others climbed into a two-decade-old Ford van in rural Hillsborough County.

On two-lane State Road 674 east of Balm, the van slowed to about 30 miles per hour - too slow for the dump truck behind it. As the trucker tried to pass on the left, the van began a left onto Grange Hall Loop.

The van sideswiped the truck, then spun clockwise out of control, hurling Pina out the back door.

He landed in the road. The truck's rear tires crushed him.

The truck driver stopped.

Not so for Salvador's fellow passengers or the van's driver. The occupants fled on foot across a cow pasture, leaving Salvador for dead. The van was registered to a Bowling Green woman. Troopers couldn't establish a driver.

No one was arrested.

To help, call the Florida Highway Patrol in Hillsborough County, (813) 632-6859, Ext. 257.

	Pleiades

Karen Pleiades
Once, she'd worked in Dallas as a fashion artist.

Sensitive, creative and adventurous, she followed her heart more than once, but she also followed a mind that betrayed her.

It told her to take showers with clothes on and to cover mirrors with blankets. It convinced her to skip medication. It made her fight with the people she loved.

No one believed she was a UFO abductee.

That bothered her.

She had changed her name to Pleiades, after a cluster of stars representing the mythological daughters of Atlas.

But she was born Karen Jo Williamson.

In the tiny Texas town of Meridian, Mary and Bobby Joe Williamson wondered what had become of their daughter. Her sister and brother planned things to do when Karen returned.

"Every time the phone would ring, I'd think it was her calling," says mother Mary Williamson, 66.

"I remember when I thought my sister knew the answer to everything," said her sister, Marla Jean Williamson Roush.

Karen left after conflict in January 1995.

Divorced, she had a teenage daughter and twin sons who lived with their father in California.

"Last time I saw her, it was about a year and a half ago," says former boyfriend Rich S. Bell, who lives in Naples. "I said to my wife, "I don't think she's going to be alive much longer." "

She was living on the street in Orlando.

The night of Aug. 7, 1997, she tried to cross U.S. 27 near Haines City. She wore a wildlife T-shirt with an alligator belt buckle.

One vehicle knocked her down. She fell onto the roadway, where witnesses said another car hit her and kept going.

She carried no identification.

For more than a year, she was "Jane Doe," a Polk County crash victim with no name of her own.

No one knew to mourn her.

In December 1998, her fingerprints matched an FBI record.

She was 45 and born in Houston.

One mystery was solved, but the driver who fled was never found.

To help, call the Florida Highway Patrol in Polk County, (941) 499-2300.

Brian Edward Riley Jr.
He could draw.

He played Nintendo with passion.

But Brian's real dreams wore a helmet. He and his father were on their way to buy a football jersey in December 1997, when an eastbound Buick appeared in the westbound lane of a Lakeland road.

Brian Sr. left skid marks trying to avoid it.

At home, Brian's mother, 911 operator Laurie Robertson, returned from her own Christmas shopping. Her sister pulled up and began to cry. Minutes passed before words came out.

"I broke down and started pounding on the wall," Robertson says.

Arrested: Raymond Allen Brown, now 23, was charged with operating a motor vehicle with no license, resulting in death, and leaving the scene of a fatal crash.

A judge dismissed the first charge. The state appealed.

No trial date has been set.

Jeffrey Rodrigues de Miranda
No one pretends he was perfect.

At age 35, Jeff had separated from his third wife. He'd crashed cars and gone to jail. His mother calls him "a late bloomer."

But when he looked at his children, he felt right with the world.

"He told me one time his children defined him," says mother Elaine Rodrigues de Miranda. "He had a tremendous emotional involvement with his children.

"He felt he had done something great."

There was a child in Utah, two in Floral City, two more in Tampa - now ages 3 and 5 - plus his wife MaryRuth's daughter.

MaryRuth figured they'd get back together.

Strong-willed, they just seemed to butt heads sometimes.

In recent years, he'd parlayed a high school equivalency diploma to senior status at the University of South Florida, where he contemplated a career as a systems analyst.

He worked in the circulation department of the St. Petersburg Times.

"He was a born salesman," his mother says. "He could sell refrigerators to Eskimos."

In truth, he sold a newspaper subscription to a blind woman, his wife says.

Then, one evening in January 1997, he pointed his motorcycle northward on U.S. 19 in Clearwater.

Inside Buffalo's Cafe at Enterprise Road, 67-year-old Fred Nassif had been arguing with his wife. They had dinner and drinks. She got angry with him and called a family member for a ride home.

Nassif left the restaurant alone.

In his Toyota Camry, he crossed three lanes of traffic for a southbound turn, directly in front of the motorcycle.

Jeff wore a helmet, but his unprotected heart ruptured. He died in minutes.

Nassif had driven away.

The next day, an old man with a raspy voice called police twice, claiming to be a witness but refusing to give his name. He said that a Toyota, not a Lexus, hit Rodrigues de Miranda. And he described the driver as a white woman with blond hair and an out-of-state license plate.

Nassif made up a story for his insurance agent, and told the body shop he wanted to keep the damaged door.

The skeptical agent alerted police.

Blood alcohol: Nassif, arrested three weeks later, wasn't tested. He told police he had one martini and one beer with dinner.

Rodrigues had marijuana residue in his urine.

Convicted: Nassif pleaded no contest to leaving the scene of a fatal crash.

Circuit Judge Anthony Rondolino sentenced him to two years house arrest and three years probation. He also revoked Nassif's driving privileges.

John Paul Ryan
A tire blew out on U.S. 27 in Polk County.

John Ryan, 54, an outdoorsman who liked to hunt deer and duck, wasn't afraid of tires. He got out to change it.

That was the last his wife Judy saw of him.

"John was a big guy, a dynamic guy," she says. "He left a big hole."

He sold Allstate Insurance almost the whole time they were married, which was 30 years. Judy worked at Sears. They had two daughters and a grandchild on the way.

The couple had flown to Orlando from Springfield, Mo., and rented a car to visit John's parents. It was Jan. 25, 1997. Back home, Missouri warmed up to the 20s while Florida chilled in the 70s with a little rain.

One car hit him and then another.

It happened near Limpkin Lane at 6:55 p.m.

Neither of the two cars were found.

To help, call the Florida Highway Patrol in Polk County, (941) 499-2300.

	Schadow

Valerie Schadow
She loved animals and nature.

She drew cartoons and caricatures.

An only child, 14, she tutored other children.

"She had a great social conscience," says her father, Eckard Schadow of Seminole.

Future architect, accomplished scholar, Valerie had her whole life ahead of her - until April 11, 1997.

Even then she changed the world.

Her left kidney freed a Bay area man from dialysis. A South Florida mother who suffered hepatitis got Valerie's healthy liver. Her lungs, young and pure, put a North Carolina man back to work.

On a rainy Friday night, Valerie and playmates had emerged from Rainbow Roller Land in Pinellas County.

She planned to sleep over at a friend's house.

In those days, her parents had dreams for her. Their friends were the parents of her friends. Her parents didn't have to invent home decorating projects to keep from getting depressed. That would change.

Near midnight, Valerie and her friends crossed Starkey Road to call for a ride from a Circle K store.

Valerie - skates in a backpack, sneakers on her feet - didn't make it.

The man driving the Pontiac Firebird didn't stop.

	Green

In the days ahead, he replaced the damaged windshield and the wiper arm that broke off on impact.

Months later, a diligent Florida Highway Patrol trooper and prosecutor pieced it all together.

Blood alcohol: Suspect Ira B. Green wasn't tested.

Convicted: Green, a 49-year-old Al Jolson impersonator who performed at Show-Offs theater, got five years probation for leaving the scene of a fatal crash.

Jane L. Short
Janie, as friends called her, worked at Families Gourmet Sandwiches on Cypress Gardens Boulevard in Winter Haven, mostly slicing meat.

At age 43, she had five kids, ranging from 15 to 21.

People at the sandwich shop knew two of those kids drew disability checks. Janie was seeing a man. On Christmas Eve 1997, she worked until afternoon, complaining that she'd never again let a man spend all her money. It would be a Christmas with no dinner, no tree.

"I didn't know exactly how bad it was for her that day," says Glenna Tuttle, the owner's daughter.

Usually, Janie didn't complain.

Stuff rolled off her, even when coworkers joked about how she pronounced jalapeno like "Jello-peno."

"You could just ride her like a dog and she took it so well," Tuttle says, fondly.

Even when her rented house in Eloise burned down in January 1997 and the Shorts lost everything - clothes, coffee pot, flatware - Janie held things together.

"She pulled up her bootstraps," Tuttle says.

Short had never learned to read and write very well, but she managed to care for her kids.

On Christmas Eve, she visited a friend in Eloise.

Her children were at a party.

It was dark at 6:50 p.m., when Short tried to cross Snively Avenue to use a telephone. She hadn't been drinking, but something went wrong.

One vehicle knocked her over and another crushed her.

Neither stopped.

"She was the glue that held that family together," Tuttle says. "We were just talking about that yesterday. Now the kids have been farmed out to foster homes.

"It's just a bad thing, her dying."

To help, call the Florida Highway Patrol in Polk County, (941) 499-2300.

	Smith

Christopher Drew Smith
Smith came from Connecticut, with "Conn" tattoed on his left arm, a 35-year-old loner who walked everywhere but never stayed long.

He filled his brain with song titles and sports trivia.

He turned heads.

"He had eyes that were black," says his mother, Allison Waller. "He had so much hair he had to have a haircut when he was 10 weeks old."

In the Army, he was stationed in Germany.

It's where he learned to drink, she figures.

He drank too much before he stepped onto U.S. 19 in Clearwater, just after 2 a.m. April 30, 1997, dressed in dark attire.

Betsy Garcia, driving a Toyota Celica, may not have had her lights on, troopers reported. She fled the scene but later called police.

The impact fractured Smith's skull. He died immediately.

"Well, it's the way the world is today," his mother can almost hear him say.

She walks by his grave, down the street from her house.

She thinks of him every day.

"Even Jesus cried," she says.

Blood alcohol: Smith, .28.

Arrested: Garcia, 25, of Palm Harbor. She pleaded no contest to leaving the scene. The judge withheld adjudication, put her on probation and sentenced her to 120 hours community service.

	Sullivan

Thomas Melvin Sullivan
He would have turned 36 in August 1997.

For the Sullivans, August meant family birthdays.

Then it came to mean pain.

"We always celebrated our birthdays around the 10th," says his sister Carol, who lives in Orlando. "He was planning to come over and have cake and ice cream."

He was her best friend.

They grew up the two youngest of an Air Force family, following their father through two tours in Iran.

Friends knew Tom as a neatnik. He belonged to the Elks and worked in sales. They treasured his humor but knew his soft spots.

"Tom was struggling with a drinking problem," says his former roommate, Jason Piner.

	Larkins

So was Piner. But the night of Aug. 1, Piner went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and Tom didn't. Instead, he met a female friend and drank.

They were arguing after 10 p.m. when she stopped her car on the east side of U.S. 19, a few blocks from his apartment. He got out and walked. He headed across the highway, away from home.

Later, that puzzled his sister. Where was he going, she wondered, and what had happened to his cashed paycheck?

"I think he got robbed and he was running across the street," she says.

He cleared only three lanes.

A vintage Chevy hit him. Its driver fled, returned to watch, then fled again, witnesses reported.

Two days later, police arrested William Alex Larkins, now 43, of Clearwater.

Blood alcohol: Sullivan, airlifted to Bayfront Medical Center, tested at .28, before dying of head injuries.

Larkins couldn't be tested.

Convicted: Larkins pleaded no contest to leaving the scene of a fatal crash. He got 10 years probation after family, friends and coworkers wrote the judge.

	Thomas

Howard Arnold Thomas
On a balmy Saturday afternoon, a former Chesapeake Bay crabber and his wife Wilda walked along Lake Reedy Boulevard in Polk County, enjoying their second week of Florida retirement.

Tired, Wilda turned back.

Thomas continued.

At 72, he hoped to slim down. He'd been reading "Eight Weeks to Optimum Health." He weighed 224 pounds and wasn't exactly tall.

He found joy even when it hid from him.

"He laughed like the Pillsbury Doughboy," daughter Alexis Thomas Dutcher said.

Before Wilda, he lost Alexis" mother to a car crash. Before that, in World War II, he lost an eye in the Battle of the Bulge. He fingered his Purple Heart until the ribbon shredded. He died not knowing he'd earned a Bronze Star.

On Nov. 15, 1997, a Chevrolet careened off the roadway into Arnold's optimistic life.

The blow devastated internal organs.

Troopers questioned Robert James Walker of Frostproof, previously convicted of DUI, disorderly intoxication and driving with a suspended license.

Blood alcohol: Walker tested at .20.

Arrested: Walker, 34, hasn't yet been tried. He's charged with DUI manslaughter, leaving the scene of a fatal crash and driving with a suspended license in a fatal crash.

Ronald J. Ward
He rigged his Murray bicycle with flashlights but lacked the red rear light that state law requires at night.

It was 11:40 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 14, 1997.

Ward, with amphetamine residue in his bloodstream, pedaled eastward through Shady Hills in Pasco County.

Behind him on County Line Road, a parked deputy finished up a traffic stop.

A van passed her, eastbound. She noticed the bad headlight and eased onto the roadway, planning to catch the van.

Instead, near Peachtree Drive, she came upon the mangled bicycle and the Inverness man's body.

Investigators believe the vehicle that hit Ward was a green 1978 Ford van sold to an unknown person immediately after the crash, possibly for parts.

"We've identified the driver, however, we have never located the vehicle," FHP Sgt. Don Young said.

To help, call the Florida Highway Patrol at (800) 500-1240.

	Judy Watkins, far right, in a family photo

Judy Ann Watkins
The Plant City native held things together. It seemed her nature, like the way she stitched clothes for grandkids and knitted slippers for family.

Stones in her ring spelled "I love you."

Her husband Ronald owned an asphalt company.

They married at 16 and 21.

Then, 34 1/2 years later, on a rainy afternoon in August 1997, a Dodge Ram with bad brakes ran a stop sign on Causeway Boulevard near Clair Mel City. The Ram driver, Gary William Peterson, had lost his Michigan driver's license four months earlier for drunk driving.

"I seen it for an instant coming out of the side street," Ronald Watkins said. "I knew it was going to hit us."

Peterson and two friends had come from a pawn shop. The Ram had been leaking brake fluid steadily, and when they neared the stop sign, Peterson swore, one friend testified.

Watkins punched the gas, trying to get away.

He'd come from Publix with Judy and two grandkids. Their truck had a back seat. Nine-year-old Drew rode beside his Grandpa; Judy, behind Drew; and 6-year-old Brandi, next to Judy.

The Ram broadsided them on Judy's side, spinning the family into the path of a third truck, which slammed into the back of them.

It felt like everyone blew up.

"I come to, I couldn't breathe," said Ronald Watkins, 57. "I couldn't get no air.

He'd suffered broken ribs, a collapsed lung and a broken finger.

"My granddaughter was screaming. I tried to get her and my grandson out, but I couldn't reach them. My leg was pinned in the console."

He got loose. Two men pulled Drew out of the front. In back, little Brandi, both collar bones broken, was pinned between her dying grandmother and the seat.

Their truck bed had crumpled like an accordian, penetrating the cab and crushing Judy's spinal cord. It severed the chains of nerves that regulate blood flow. It lacerated her liver. Her blood pressure dropped, emptying the chambers of her heart.

Ronald reached past the necklace that said "Mom." He took Judy's face into his hands.

"I blowed in my wife's mouth trying to get her revived," he said.

"But I couldn't get her to come back."

The dazed driver of the third truck searched the scene for his 2-year-old daughter. His wife assured him she was in the car seat. Still, he wandered, calling out to his baby girl.

Meanwhile, Brandi screamed in an unbroken siren.

When the real sirens came, Peterson was long gone.

Blood alcohol: Witnesses said Peterson had been drinking, but the arrest came 24 hours after the crash.

Convicted: Judge Cynthia Holloway, who found Peterson guilty of leaving the scene of a fatal accident and driving with a suspended license, sentenced him to a year in jail and four years probation - with the condition that he never drive again.

With a court-appointed appellate lawyer, he's fighting to get back on the road.

	Wehinger

George Edward Wehinger
If his Bradenton neighbors raked leaves, Wehinger, 43, raked leaves, expecting no pay. He stood at intersections forever, waiting for a safe crossing.

His sister Colleen Wehinger had seen "Forrest Gump."

"God, that's just like George," she told family.

George had worn fingerprints in his Bible's leather cover, and the night he left for heaven, April 30, 1997, he ate first at a church dinner.

He pedaled his Western Flyer north on U.S. 41. He crossed a side street; then, from behind, came Clifton Albert Gill, driving a big, boxy truck. Gill had no license.

The truck's side mirror whacked George on the head, hard enough that he would be dead in two hours.

Gill kept going.

A witness described the truck - a retired Ryder rental. A deputy recalled the truck from a traffic stop and identified the driver, who was arested that night.

Blood alcohol: Gill tested at .21.

Wehinger had not been drinking.

Convicted: Gill, 48, pleaded no contest to DUI manslaughter, leaving the scene of a fatal accident and driving with no license. He's serving a 14-year prison sentence, to be followed by five years probation and house arrest.

	Zakusylo

Joanne Zakusylo
Overseas during Operation Desert Storm, she sent home Polaroid snapshots, each with a caption for her daughter, Jessica, then 12.

There was Mom, groggy, in Saudi Arabia: "Good morning, America."

Mom, in headphones: "Rock on."

Mom, waving: "Hi!! I love you. See ya soon."

Her homecoming brought red roses and a limo ride.

Proud to be a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army Reserve, Zakusylo - 5-foot-4, 116 pounds - stayed trim by walking miles around her Port Richey home with the family dog, Polly.

At age 37, she worked as a systems operator at the Suncoast News.

On Feb. 17, 1997, the address on Polly's dog tag helped troopers identify Zakusylo, who had been killed by a hit-and-run driver a half-hour before sunset on Ranch Road.

A witness led them to a Nissan pickup truck.

Its driver, Michael L. Hutchinson, told police he thought he hit a deer.

Blood alcohol: Hutchinson, .15.

Convicted: Hutchinson, 48, pleaded no contest to manslaughter/culpable negligence and leaving the scene, in exchange for dismissal of a DUI manslaughter charge.

A judge sent him to prison for 9 1/2 years.

He had come to Florida from Illinois to care for his mother. She died of cancer two months before the crash.